More women in senior roles boosts financial performance: study
Last Updated: Monday, May 11, 2009 | 11:06 AM ET
CBC News
Businesses should use the recession as a way to get more women into their corporations, says a new report released Monday.
Ernst & Young, an international business consultancy, said women remain under-represented in companies — especially in senior roles — despite evidence that female participation boosts firm performance.
"Investing in women to drive economic growth is not simply about morality or fairness. It's about honing a competitive edge," said Ernst & Young chairman and chief executive officer Lou Pagnutti.
Still not there
He noted that women account for approximately 45 per cent of all university graduates but yet have employment rates more than 20 per cent lower than men. Worse still, they earn 15 per cent less than their male counterparts.
In recent years, female participation in companies has stagnated even as the correlation between women in the boardroom and financial performance remains strong, Pagnutti said.
Goldman Sachs estimated that per-capita incomes could grow almost 15 per cent within the next 11 years by decreasing the gap between how many men versus women have jobs.
The situation is more troublesome in the corporate senior ranks.
In Europe, women constitute only 11 per cent of the governing ranks of the continent's major firms. In the United States, less than a third of companies have even one woman in their senior ranks, Ernst & Young noted.
Ironically, the current recession, a time when firms are seeking to find new ways to stay in business, is exactly when companies should be figuring out strategies to put more women into executive chairs, the report said.
"While many corporations and governments have for years been making efforts to tap into the hidden potential of women … now is the time to accelerate these efforts," said the study.
Companies have been grappling for years with ways of keeping women in their firms. Strategies have bounced around between near quotas to mentoring programs to a better work-life balance.
In the most recent report on the gap between men and women in the workplace and within society in general, however, the World Economic Forum said that the difference has actually widened in 41 of the 130 countries studied.
